Armonica

Armonica are an Italian DJ/Production duo who made their name for themselves as the resident players at the legendary Cocorico club in Italy. Now with releases on MoBlack and Bar 25 Music under their belts, and a release lined up on andhim’s Superfriends coming up, we caught up the guys to discuss the upcoming release, their residency at Cocorico, and their plans for the forseeable future…

Hi guys, how are you both?

Everything is going fine, we are really happy to answer to your questions while we’re eating a good piadina (which is a typical local food)!

What’s the story being Armonica? How did you guys meet and come to form the duo?

We were resident DJs of Cocoricò and basically part of the same scene here in Riccione, so we’ve started to collaborate together even before we formed Armonica at the end of last year. Then we decided to merge our careers into this new project, due to our strong friendship and our attitude in music.

Were you always musical growing up? What inspired you to make electronic music?

Music was always part of our lives. We’ve always been fascinating by electronic sounds and we love getting our hands on oscillators and analog gears, like a child playing with his toys. It was our natural course, from the beginning.

How would you describe your sound?

We are just doing what we feel. We are trying to pick up elements from different genres in order to create a personal and original sound, escaping from typical trends. To us, music needs to transmit emotions, no matter what genre is or what device you use to create it. It’s like you’re on a train, looking out of the window and getting lost in what you’re seeing, recreating it through music.

Would you say growing up in Italy was beneficial for your sound, musical education and career?

We’ve been always very connected to our local scene and this gave us the possibility to emerge, even if it wasn’t so easy, basically because local artists are not properly enhanced. Anyway, we always focused on our music and our work so we don’t really care about that, every place is a right place to make music and we believe that we will get what we really deserve.

You’ve also been gaining some mammoth support from the likes of Dixon, Ame and Solomun! How does it feel to have your tracks played by such great artists?

What can we say? Of course we’re happy and extremely proud of it. When we saw Dixon, Ame and Solomun play our tracks – especially our Mabiisi’s ‘Bakooya’ remix – it was almost shocking! We deeply love and respect these artists and for us it was the treat for our hard work.

What’s your studio set up like to produce such music?

We mainly use analog synths, like Moog Sub 37, Vermona Performer, Arp Odyssey and Korg MS 20, Ableton as a sequencer, and Pro Tools for the final mixdown. We sometimes record organic sounds and work with musicians in studio, it depends from what we have in mind.

Who would you say your main influences are?

We grew up listening to artists like Radiohead, Kraftwerk, Bjork, Matmos, Al Green, Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, Brian Eno, Aphex Twin and Ryuichi Sakamoto, but the list could be longer. We can find a lot of inspiration from these artists.

You’re regulars at the infamous Cocorico! What’s it like to play to that crowd in such a venue?

There is only a place in the world where you can dance under a glass-made pyramid, with the sunrise light coming up from the sea. It’s magical, probably one of the most extraordinary experiences for a DJ.

If you could take your music to one destination where would out be? Where would you love to play?

Actually, we don’t really have a favourite place where to play. We love to play in clubs where people has the right attitude, no matter how big or famous is. Of course there are a lot of clubs where we would like to play, maybe somewhere in South America.

What does the future hold for Armonica? Any further goals or ambitions to reach in the years to come?

Let’s just keep our head down in studio and see what happens. Our aim is to make people dance and this is our first goal, then things will come.